Poetry Analysis: The Whipping by Robert Hayden

Before reading this poem, I thought that it was about someone whipping someone or something. After reading it, I know that it is about an old woman, maybe a grandmother, beating a small boy, maybe the grandson. I can tell that is struggling and crying. He is sobbing because maybe he had done something wrong. I didn't understand some of the poem and what it was trying to say. I think it was some imagery that I couldn't quite decipher.

There were a few enjambments and caesuras here and there, but what I wanted to focus on was the imagery. There was a lot of imagery that I didn't exactly get. I think that the narrator is a neighbor who is watching this little boy get beaten up by an old woman. I liked this poem and would like to understand it better.

I didn't understand when it stated, 

"Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,

        pleads in dusty zinnias"

I also couldn't quite get the poem when it said,

"My head gripped in bony vise

        of knees, the writhing struggle

to wrench free"